


a memory of the smell of smoke

by romans



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Weird, and then gets, i just broke a year-long writer's block fuck yeah, in which the author takes JKR at her word
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-27
Updated: 2016-12-27
Packaged: 2018-09-12 12:26:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9071641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romans/pseuds/romans
Summary: "J.K. Rowling Reveals Percival Graves Does Not Exist"





	

_“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;_  
_I lift my lids and all is born again._  
_(I think I made you up inside my head.)”_

_ROS: We might as well be dead. Do you think death could possibly be a boat?_  
_GUIL: No, no, no … Death is … not. Death isn’t. You take my meaning. Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being. You can’t not-be on a boat._  
_ROS: I’ve frequently not been on boats._  
_GUIL: No, no, no – what you’ve been is not on boats._

 

 

 

Credence is sitting on his bunk, curled into himself under the metal railings of the bunk above him, marvelling at how safe he feels, in his little metal bunker-room, safe and contained and miles away from anyone and anything he knows– soon, anyways– when the engines hum underfoot and the whole ship rocks gently, like a sleeper awakening from a long doze–

And Mr. Graves walks into his cabin, coat swinging, shoes polished, case in hand, and says-

He could have said anything. Credence doesn’t hear him, because his entire world has buckled in on itself. Terror crashes over him, obliterating rational thought-- he's not free, Grindelwald has found him-- he still has the damn necklace--

He can hide or he can fight. 

Credence goes very far away. 

Anything could happen now. He'll survive. He won't hurt anyone. He stares at a stain dripping down the wall across from him, rust showing through the white-and-green paint. 

“Credence,” Mr. Graves says, “where are we?”

The whole room shudders again, and Credence can’t be sure if it was his magic, or the engines turning.

“We’re on a ship,” Credence says, still feeling very far away. 

A voice, very distantly at the back of his mind, whispers that he should be afraid, or angry. 

_Be not afraid_ , Credence finds himself thinking, nonsensically. He can imagine Mr. Graves saying it. Mr. Graves wasn’t who he seemed to be. Mr. Graves wasn’t who he’d said he was. Mr. Graves wasn’t–

The ship wobbles a little and then settles into a steady rhythm, carrying them away from Brooklyn, past Lady Liberty. Soon they’ll be far out to sea.

“Credence?” Mr. Graves is still waiting for an answer, and his eyes are soft, expectant, and Credence ( _as usual_ ) has nothing for him. He licks his lips, huddles back into his bunk.

“Are you real?” he asks. Maybe the Obscurus is making him see things.

“I’m as real as you are,” Mr. Graves says, swinging himself down to sit on the bunk opposite Credence. 

That doesn’t help, not as much as it should. Credence is having a hard time grasping reality, lately. First it had bent to his mother’s every whim, daily and nightly, and then Miss Goldstein had pulled the rug out from under his feet, with her witchcraft, and then Mr. Graves had shaken him up all over again. He had made flowers bloom for Credence, had soothed his hurts and opened up new doors, a new _world_ –

And that, too, had been ripped from Credence’s grasp.

Credence stares suspiciously at the man sitting in his cabin.

He’s almost positive that Gellert Grindelwald is locked in a MACUSA cell, and that the man he’d known as Percival Graves hadn’t-–

Almost.

 _”Revelio,”_ Credence whispers, stumbling a little over the spell.

Mr. Graves’ case opens of its own accord; Credence hadn’t noticed him setting it down. Mr. Graves' tie unties itself, and his shirt tries to undo a few buttons.

Mr. Graves raises an eyebrow.

But his face doesn’t change. There are no ripples or wrinkles in his skin. His hair remains black.

“Credence,” he says, “I need to know what’s going on. The last thing I remember is meeting you outside the Woolworth Building, and now–”

“I don’t know how you got here,” Credence says, “I thought- I thought you were–”

Dead. 

*

Credence was almost positive he was dead, after the subway. All of him was coiled into a wisp of smoke, diaphanous and ephemeral, neither living nor dead. 

There was no way for him to have survived the witch-hunt in the subway, so he drifted across New York, sliding through walls, floating on the breeze. He was burning alive, every second of every day, and he didn’t know how to stop it.

_If Grindelwald could cast an Imperius curse over a whole department, and keep us going for— then why didn’t he just start a war outright?_

Credence– or what was left of him– had sat in on the fraught meetings that were called in the aftermath of the Obscurus attacks. He was one wisp of smoke among many, floating unnoticed in the conjured images of death and destruction.

He’d been searching for answers. He’d been searching for Mr. Graves.

It seemed that the entirety of MACUSA was uncertain about what exactly had happened. Seraphina Picquery, her face drawn, her eyes red, had stood before the Wizengamot and tried to explain:

They all knew Mr. Graves. They all trusted Mr. Graves. You didn’t just hand over the entirety of Wizarding America to an unknown entity—

But no one knew where he was.

Or, for that matter, _if_ he was. 

It didn't make sense. 

Credence drifted out of the court room, and, eventually, materialised in front of the R.M.S. Belgenland, bound for Antwerp via Boulogne-sur-Mer. 

Perhaps his magic was taking care of him. 

*

Maybe Mr. Graves is real in the way his ticket is real. He’d found it in his pocket, when he was hesitating at the foot of the gangway. It hadn't been there before-- he must have stolen it, or conjured it ( _accio ticket_ ). The porter had scrutinised his thin coat, frowned at his lack of luggage, but in the end he’d led Credence down one flight of stairs and then down again into the third-class cabins in the bowels of the ship. There are six bunks crammed into one tiny room, but Credence doesn’t have to share them with anyone.

Well.

There’s Mr. Graves, sitting on the bunk opposite him ( _accio Graves_ ).

Maybe they’re both ghosts.

“Credence?” Mr. Graves says, “Tell me what you know.”

"You weren't real," Credence whispers.

"Of course I'm real," Mr. Graves says. He holds his hands up, wiggles his fingers like he's demonstrating his objective reality.

"How could I not be real?" Mr. Graves asks him, smiling.

"You were Gellert Grindelwald," Credence says.

Mr. Graves blanches at that, and frowns, and runs a hand wearily over his face. He looks at his hand blearily for a moment, as if he half-expected his face to come off with it.

"I'm real," he says, "and I'm very confused. But I'm in this room with you right now, and Gellert Grindelwald is-- did he hurt you?” Mr. Graves asks, his brow wrinkling with concern.

Grindelwald had always been kind to him- right up until the end. Nearly until the end.

“Does it matter? He only wanted me because of-- I’m– _evil_ ,” Credence says, because he’s an affront to God, an affront to the wizarding world, _unnatural_. He’s the Devil’s creature. 

He doesn’t particularly want to be part of the wizarding world, now, because all he can offer is death and destruction. Mr. Graves might not even be _real_ \-- perhaps he’s gone mad--

He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, feels his chest expand. Fire licks at his skin, tingles at the end of his fingers. He's lost in a haze of smoke-- 

“Shhh—” Mr. Graves says, “ _Credence!_ ”

The world snaps back into place. 

When Credence opens his eyes, one of the metal bunks is dented as if it had been wrenched by an enormous hand.

“Hey,” Mr. Graves says, coming to kneel in front of Credence. He's going to get his trousers dirty, Credence thinks.

Mr. Graves' hands are open, placating. “Credence, you’re safe. You’re fine,” he's saying. 

His eyes are warm and brown and worried and when Credence reaches out to him he doesn’t flinch away, even though tears are rolling down Credence’s cheeks and he can feel himself shaking helplessly. Credence touches Mr. Graves’ face with his fingertips, and is surprised when it’s warm and solid to the touch.

He’d been so certain they were both dead.

“It’s all right,” Mr. Graves says.

“ _Please_ ,” Credence says. He hardly recognises his own voice.

When Mr. Graves crawls into the bunk beside him and draws him close, he collapses with relief. If he can just bury his face in Mr. Graves' shoulder and breathe in his cigarette-smoke scent and pretend the whole world doesn’t exist, he might be all right.

*

"What's the first thing you remember?" he asks, a little later.

Mr. Graves is behind him now, snugged up close from shoulder to ankle. His hand has slipped under Credence's shirt, and he's stroking Credence through his undershirt. 

Mr. Graves huffs a breath into Credence's hair, and his smile presses into the back of Credence's head.

"After Grindelwald?" he asks, "Or before?"

"All of it."

"Well-" Mr. Graves says. His grip tightens a little. "I was born in 1886, in a townhouse in the Upper East Side, to Eleuther Graves and Jocasta Galois. My parents were well-respected members of wizarding society..."

*

Credence drifts off halfway through Mr. Graves' story, lulled by the rocking of the ship and the rumble of Mr. Graves' voice. His dreams are all of grey fog, a roiling mist that consumes him inch by shuddering inch. Or perhaps he's dissolving, unfolding, spreading out into his true form--

When he wakes up, Mr. Graves asleep beside him. The ship hums around them, offering only the faintest hint of a choppy sea beyond their four walls.

Mr. Graves stirs, as if sensing his gaze, and turns to look at him. His eyes are liquid and dark.

"I'm real," he whispers. He reaches out to touch Credence's face again. "I know I'm real."

"I don't," Credence says. He leans into Graves' hand.

"If I'm not real," Mr. Graves says, his breath ghosting over Credence's ear, "then how am I here?"

"You can't be here," Credence says, flopping onto his side. He finds Mr. Graves' hand, examines the callused fingers, the manicured nails. "If you were real, you wouldn't be here with me."

"Why?" Mr. Graves asks.

"You'd be a prisoner," Credence says. It's easier to argue with a figment of his imagination than it would be to argue with the real thing. Mr. Graves had always had all the answers, before.

"I think I _was_ ," Mr. Graves says. "I don't-- I can't remember. I know who I was before... and a little bit after, but the rest is a blank."

"How did you get here?" Credence asks.

"I don't know," Mr. Graves says. "I remember Grindelwald, and then there was darkness-- and then I was here."

Credence rolls over and reaches out to touch Mr. Graves' face. Mr. Graves closes his eyes and submits patiently to Credence's curious fingers.

"Did he hurt you?" Credence asks, running his thumb over the point of Mr. Graves’ cheekbone. If Graves had really-- apparated-- from Grindelwald's dungeon, he'd expect him to be more disheveled. More angry.

Mr. Graves works his arm between their bodies to open the last few buttons on his shirt. When he reaches down and pulls up his white under-shirt, his arm brushes against Credence's chest.

A jagged red line, cut deep, is slashed across his ribcage. There's a yellowed bruise peeking out from the waistband of his trousers. Credence watches his chest rise and fall, fascinated by the softness, the vulnerability of all the skin on display.

"Yes," Mr. Graves says. "He must have Obliviated the worst of it, but-"

Credence traces over the scar, watches Mr. Graves shudder under his touch.

"Do you remember meeting me?" Credence asks. He wants to hear Mr. Graves' version.

"I had to check up on you after Tina Goldstein botched Obliviating you," Mr. Graves says. "You were handing out those flyers with your mother. She looked right through me, but you... you saw me. You knew me for what I was."

"You were the best thing that ever happened to me," Credence says. He nuzzles into Mr. Graves' hand. It's easy to be intimate, in the semi-darkness of their cabin.

"I wish I could have done more," Mr. Graves says. He strokes the outer shell of Credence's ear, and Credence shudders with pleasure. "There must have been a moment when I could have stopped him--"

"You're here now," Credence says, cutting him off. He rolls onto his side. Their knees knock together. When Credence leans in, his lips brush against Mr. Graves’ lips. 

Mr. Graves smiles against his mouth. 

" _Please_ ," Credence gasps, a little while later, and Mr. Graves, sliding down the bed, seems to understand exactly what Credence wants. Which is good, because Credence doesn't have the words to describe what he wants.

Mr. Graves, his lips on Credence's skin, his hand on Credence's neck, always seems to understand what he wants.

*

Credence extricates himself from Mr. Graves' grasp some time later, and slips into the first pair of trousers that comes to hand, hopping on one foot. Mr. Graves watches him as he dresses, eyes glittering in the semi-dark.

"Real enough for you?" he asks, his voice hoarse with sleep. Credence blushes. He shoves his bare feet into a pair of boots, pulls his coat on to hide his disheveled condition, and, with one last look back at Mr. Graves, leaves the cabin.

He attends to his bodily needs, and splashes his face with cold water from the sink in the communal washroom. He stinks abominably of sweat and bodily fluids, and there's a ring of bruises around his neck, mostly from Mr. Graves' mouth.

Credence flushes a little, looking at his debauched reflection in the mirror, and turns the collar of his coat up.

He goes up on deck. The wind cuts through his coat like a knife through butter, but he barely notices it.

There's no sign of any horizon, no matter how hard he strains his eyes. Just the ocean, rippling away as far as the eye can see. He clings to the rails and leans out, watching the white water that roils around the sides of the ship.

He wishes he knew more about magic.

The wizards at MACUSA seem to think that Graves was dead, at best, or that he had never existed at all. It hurts his head if he thinks about it too hard-- had he made Graves up wholesale? Was Graves just another version of his Obscurus?

No. Graves had worked at MACUSA. Other people had known him, had trusted him, had put their lives into his hands.

At least he's not alone in that.

Perhaps Graves and Grindelwald and his Obscurus are all inextricably tangled up together. Maybe the man-- the thing?-- down in his cabin is just Grindelwald, wearing a mask again.

He needs to be more careful, he thinks. 

Graves was never real; Graves was the only good thing in his life.

Maybe he summoned Graves from wherever Grindelwald had imprisoned him. Credence knew, now, that he was powerful. He wasn't sure what his limits were, or what magic would allow him to do.

His mother had taught him that the Devil came to witches in the form of a familiar. Maybe a cat, maybe a dog-

Maybe a man.

_Please help me..._

Credence stares at the waves leaping in the ship's wake, and wonders what would happen if he fell overboard. Would his Obscurus save him? Would Mr. Graves leap after him?

The bite mark on his neck stings when the wind snakes inside of his coat. He's wearing Mr. Graves' discarded trousers, he realises belatedly.

He has no idea who's waiting for him down in his cabin. Just hope.

He would just have to be-- careful. Watchful.

Untrusting.

He closes his coat and goes back down to his cabin.

*

Mr. Graves is staring at him.

Credence turns his head to the side, avoiding the other man’s gaze, and shakes himself like a wet dog.

Mr. Graves doesn’t move. He just sits on Credence’s bunk, black-eyed and inquisitive. Waiting.

His hands are linked loosely together in the valley between his two knees, and his fingers twitch a little when Credence looks at them.

Credence closes his eyes, shakes a little. And-– right on cue-– a warm hand cups the side of his face, fingers a little chilled at the tips. If he nuzzles into the rough skin of Mr. Graves’ palm, he’ll smell cigarette smoke and Brilliantine.

If.

He shouldn’t be–- Credence pulls away from the warmth and opens his eyes.

Mr. Graves, settling down on the thin mattress again, smirks at him.

He’s always had trouble remembering to be afraid of Mr. Graves.


End file.
